Supporting academic integrity: Learning about plagiarism through information literacy

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Supporting academic integrity Learning about
plagiarism through information literacy

• Debbi Boden
• Faculty Team Leader

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Plagiarism and Higher Education (HE)

• Plagiarism is high on the HE agenda
• HE in a moral panic!!
• Kent University in the UK
• A student who admits down-loading material from
  the internet for his degree plans to sue his
  university for negligence
• BBC News (World edition)
• 
  

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Plagiarism at university

• Diversity of background and cultures
• Economic pressures
• High expectations
• Deficiency in writing skills
• Information explosion

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Plagiarism at university

• Learned behaviour
• School - cutting and pasting culture
• Coursework the charter for school cheats (The
  Independent November 4 , 2005)
• International students
• Language skills
• Fear of failure
• Academic traditions

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Plagiarism at university

• Economic pressures
• High expectations
• Deficiency in writing skills
• Information explosion

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Plagiarism How can the library help?

• a culture of crime and punishment does not foster
  learning
• a good policy is necessary but it is not enough
  to tackle plagiarism
• Institutions must be able to trace back to the
  very point every student was taught about
  plagiarism

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Olivia Olivia who?
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Who is Olivia?

• Olivia Online Virtual Information Assistant
• Online information literacy programme
• Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) WebCT

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Objectives

• To provide access to an online environment which
  is
• made up of self-contained units that can be used
  either
• selectively according to the needs of the users,
  or as a
• complete linear programme.

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Competency based

• Course based on a set of competencies which
  incorporated key skills 3 4 methodology and
  salient themes from various IL models
• Sconul 7 pillars
• Caul
• ALA

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Olivia

• 9 self contained learning units
• A staff information area
• A first time users information area
• Help and contact

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How did we use the IL programme?

• Blended learning
• Lectures
• Demonstrations
• Hands on sessions
• Self paced learning
• Interactive learning
• Questionnaires
• Self test
• Marked quizzes
• Online tutorials

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• Olivia

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statistics

• Number of courses 2004 / 05 7
• Number of courses 2005 / 06
  15
• Number of students enrolled 2004 / 05
  1600
• Number of students enrolled 2005 / 06
  3000
• Number of teaching hours 2004 / 05 81
• Most popular units
• UGs databases, referencing the Internet
• PGs referencing, databases information

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Quality assurance

• How do we know Olivia is any good?
• Has the learner acquired the desired types or
  level of capability
• Have they benefited from the educational
  experience?
• Need to think about how we assess whether
  outcomes have been achieved
• How do we measure impact of IL?
• Improvement in quality of students work (academic
  feedback)
• Evaluation sheets
• Focus groups

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What is happening at Loughborough?

• Lunchtime in the Library
• Subject specific courses
• Study skills
• Database of the Month
• Concentrates on particular databases
• Embedding into courses
• Supporting material on Learn a new tutorial
  called InfoTrail
• Your Academic Librarians
• Steph McKeating / Lizzie Gadd Tracy Marshall

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Final thoughts

• There will always be a few students who
  deliberately plagiarise
• The majority of students entering HE have a lack
  of understanding what plagiarism is
• A good IL programme with with support from the
  academics can help solve many of the issues
  surrounding plagiarism and help students become
  effective independent learners
• Contact your library let them help!

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The Times